TODAY: In 1894, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the pen name of French novelist Dr. Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches and author of Journey to the End of the Night, is born.
- Denis Johnson, one of the great writers of his generation, has died. | The Washington Post
- Soon you’ll be able to get your Margaret Atwood fix on Netflix and Hulu: an adaptation of Alias Grace is set to debut this fall. | The Huffington Post
- “The irony is that my catharsis was writing down that there is no catharsis.” Maggie Nelson on The Red Parts, 10 years later. | The Guardian
- A relatively traditional adaptation of a wildly unconventional novel: How Jill Soloway’s I Love Dick falls short as transgressive art. | Vogue
- On the genius of Chinua Achebe, who “enables us to hear the voices of Igboland in a new use of our own language.” | NYRB
- “To fully appreciate the novel’s longevity, artistry, and global resonance, it is essential to examine the unlikely confluence of factors that helped it overcome a difficult publishing climate and the author’s relative anonymity at the time.” How One Hundred Years of Solitude became a classic. | The Atlantic
- On a new biography of literary critic and New York Intellectual Diana Trilling, “a queenly Cold Warrior with a temperamental aversion to revolt.” | The New Yorker
- “Even in great historical fiction, I find myself getting lost in the intrigue of the era.” An interview with Amelia Gray. | Chicago Review of Books
- Using the master’s font to footnote the master text: On artist Jenifer Wightman’s quest to addend every known Gutenberg bible with a broadside “that reinterprets the story of Adam and Eve using evolutionary and contemporary science.” | Pacific Standard
- Richard Ford on Bruce Springsteen, stealing cars, and finding an audience. | VICE
- In which Tony Tulathimutte provides “subjective, unsolicited, and frankly sort of aggro advice” on pursuing a writing career. | Catapult
- “[Writing is] not like a compulsion like washing my hands until they bleed. It’s more like I give in to a desire to try to make sense of something.” An interview with Sarah Manguso. | The Riveter
- On the difficulty of representing Richard Nixon (“always already a readymade caricature”) in fiction. | Public Books
- “And still, they come, telling us/Through the ages not to fear.” A poem by Tracy K. Smith. | The Awl
- From In Cold Blood to The Devil in the White City, 10 of the best true crime books of all time. | Publishers Weekly
- “Whatever someone is doing when making art. . . I’m interested in the idea that to some extent they’re pursuing or exploring or resolving or exorcising their own fantasies.” An interview with Jen George. | Full Stop
In the second installment of Lit Hub Longform, Karen Russell ruminates on America’s housing catastrophe· Finishing a memoir with months to live: Tita Ramirez remembers her friend, Nina Riggs · Announcing the winners of the 2017 O. Henry Prize (and four of the prizewinning stories) · In which Virginia Woolf, too, bemoans the proliferation of personal essays· A vision of solidarity we need today in a 12th-century Iranian poem · Edwidge Danticat on Port-au-Prince and listening to the voices that speak from Haiti· Every Sunday, the enema man calls McSorley’s: 20 years of the same prank call at a legendary NYC bar · Our bodies don’t belong to us: On living with trauma · On Girlboss, a monument to capitalism dressed up as a sitcom · Emo comes off like Rimbaud at the food court: A 2003 essay by Jessica Hopper
Best of Book Marks:
In the wake of his passing, we look back at Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son · China Miéville’s kaleidoscopic retelling of the Russian Revolution · The Los Angeles Times calls Amelia Gray’s Isadora “a heavenly celebration of women in charge of their bodies” · How Dave Eggers’ 2000 memoir broke our mother*cking hearts · Joy Williams on the grim magic of Karen Russell’s stories · Back in 1981, The New York Times wrote about the low-rent tragedies of Raymond Carver · A 1978 review of John Cheever’s National Book Award-winning Collected Stories · Jo Nesbø, Edan Lepucki, Maurice Sendak, George Orwell, and more all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
